


Home Sweet Horde

by genVicron



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Cause Catra's a mess and Entrapta's got a lot of new stuff to get used to, Hurt/Comfort, It has been decided by canon that Scorpia wants the emotionally unavailable kitty, Other, Scorpia is a hundred percent Mom Friend, This aught to be fun, Warnings tags and rating will be updated as necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2019-10-13 04:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17480864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genVicron/pseuds/genVicron
Summary: Scorpia knows life with the Horde can get to be a bit of a drag sometimes.  Between Shadow Weaver induced nightmares, Hordak’s ruthless field tactics, and everybody fighting to get to the top it can be a gloomy place.  That’s why she’s taken it upon herself to brighten things up any way she can.(A collection of stories/drabbles for me to explore Scorpia in.  Will certainly be fluffy, might get a bit dark, but people can always trust Scorpia to help them back on their feet and to meet the day with a smile.)





	1. Happy Thoughts: Part 1

It was only three days with the Horde before Entrapta started having the nightmares. Or five, Scorpia guessed, since she spent two days hiding in the vents.

It was who even knew how late, and Scorpia was guarding the princess’ cell, trying to think about something exciting and not listening too closely to the distant rumble of machinery so she wouldn’t fall asleep. It had been a good while since Catra had left to talk to Hordak and she was getting close to being dead on her feet.

So she wondered if a cell was still a cell if the person inside it could leave at anytime. It wasn’t like they could really contain Entrapta, or wanted to; they were just keeping her down here until Catra had Hordak’s go-ahead to let her loose on the Black Garnet. Was this more of a crummy bedroom at this point than a cell?

Scorpia’s eyes were still drifting closed every few seconds despite her best efforts, so in a way she was almost grateful for the short, terrified scream that came from Entrapta’s room. She had decided that right now it definitely counted as a room, they hadn’t even bothered locking it, after all.

Regardless, the shout drove the sleep from Scorpia’s mind, suddenly crystal clear she whirled around to open the door. Entrapta had her back plastered to her robot Emily, her enormous hair practically caccooning it, wide, frightened eyes scanning the room back and forth. Scorpia gave the room a once-over just to be safe, but didn’t see anything else out of place. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind herself, holding up her pincers as Entrapta’s hair coiled tight enough that Emily’s chassis creaked.

“Hey, you alright?” Scorpia asked, staying next to the door to avoid frightening her further.

“I-” Entrapta shook her head, her hair starting to unwind from around her bot. “It would seem I had a nightmare, not unusual after sudden changes in life.” Scorpia nodded.

“Big scary shadow?” She guessed, bringing Entrapta’s eyes back to her with a mix of surprise and curiosity. “It had a mask and was after…” Scorpia glanced to Emily, who had only now regained the ability to move, “your pet robot?”

“That’s correct,” Entrapta took a step forwards, the surprise leaving her expression to be replaced by an intense focus as she looked Scorpia up and down again. It was a little weird to be watched so closely by somebody other than a drill instructor, but she could ignore the weirdness in her chest for the moment. “Can you see dreams, what happened after that?” In the time where Scorpia had been recentering herself Entrapta had managed to cross the room and couldn’t have been more than ten inches from her face, her mask down and using her hair to lift herself up to eye level.

“Uh- no, everybody gets those dreams around here. Usually leads into something way worse once she catches you.” Scorpia suddenly found herself wondering if this was how Catra felt about her personal space. “It’s no big deal.” Entrapta cocked her head and fished a recorder out of her pocket, hitting record.

“Fight Zone Log day five, a possible psychic phenomena has made itself apparent, investigating.” She offered Scorpia the recorder, “explain.” Scorpia jumped a little.

“It’s- well, it’s just Shadow Weaver.” She shrugged, “she’s got a lot of psychic powers, she’s been in everybody’s head at least once, and she’s… well she’s not nice, it puts off all these weird vibes. So, nightmares. Everybody’s got a way to deal with them.”

“Fascinating, how widespread is this?” Entrapta asked, mask still down. Scorpia decided riding out the discomfort was the right move, she was already getting used to having Entrapta this close.

“Well, the closer you are to the Black Garnet chamber the worse the nightmares get, but basically the whole Fright Zone.” Scorpia hummed to herself, “I heard some people say that if you sleep on the highest bridge connecting this building to Hordak’s castle you won’t get them, but I haven’t tried that. Catra might have, she sleeps in all sorts of weird places when nobody’s looking.”

“Is this a nightly occurrence?” There was something different about Entrapta’s voice that time, it was a bit smaller, not quite as eager as before. Scorpia tapped on Entrapta’s mask and it swung back up. Entrapta flinched back, but Scorpia still got a look at her eyes. She was worried.

“Yeah,” Scorpia said with a sigh, it wouldn’t do any good to lie to her about this. “More than nightly, any time you fall asleep.” The recorder clicked as Entrapta stopped it, stowing it into one of her pockets as her brow furrowed and she moved back to sit next to Emily, one of her twintails going to wrap around its closest leg, muttering to herself as she stared intently at the other side of the room.

Scorpia watched for a moment, she’s seen that look before. On kids who hadn’t expected the nightmares to get as bad as they did, or older officers who had enough rattling around in their heads it made them afraid to sleep. That was the look of someone about to try and go days at a time without.

Well, she couldn’t let that happen to her new friend. Scorpia stepped closer and crouched down in front of Entrapta, looking her in the eyes. “Hey, like I said, everybody’s got their ways to stop them.” Entrapta’s eyes flicked over Scorpia’s face, that studying intensity back again, Scorpia met her with a bright smile. “Mine is I think of all the things that make me smile before I go to sleep. It doesn’t always work, nobody’s method does, but it works most of the time. How about we try that?” After a long moment she nodded.

Entrapta screwed up her face as she closed her eyes and Scorpia had to stifle a laugh, she looked like a little kid trying to concentrate.

Scorpia brought up a pincer to give her a tap on the forehead. “You’re trying too hard, you’ll never fall asleep like that.” Entrapta crossed her arms and pouted a little, drawing a small gasp from Scorpia as she was struck by how adorable she was. Scorpia cleared her throat to try and cover the noise, “I’ll show you.”

She sat down on the floor and settled her claws in her lap, closing her eyes. “Just close your eyes, take a deep breath,” she listened for Entrapta’s exhale before continuing, “and relax.” She let her shoulders droop and her chin dip down onto her chest. “Then just start listing things you like in your head.”

It would occur to Scorpia later that this was probably a bad idea since she was supposed to be guarding the room and she was already bone tired. Right then, however, she was out like a light within seconds.

The next thing she knew she was very warm. She blearily opened her eyes, shaking her head slightly and looking around. She saw Emily, but Entrapta wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was a flash of panic as she realized she couldn’t move, right up until a very loud snore sounded from below her chin, Scorpia looked down and had to stop herself from making another happy noise.

Entrapta had pitched forwards at some point while she slept and was pressed directly into her chest. She had wrapped Scorpia in her hair tight enough that she couldn’t move, was snoring like a chainsaw, and was drooling a little; but she was sleeping peacefully and that was the important part. This was definitely going on the list of things to think about before she slept.

Scorpia was able to catch another nap in Entrapta’s grip before Catra finally showed back up. She woke Scorpia up by poking her in the forehead, an eyebrow raised as Scorpia smiled up at her from her place tangled up with Entrapta.

“...I was gonna apologize for forgetting I told you to stay down here, but it doesn’t look like that was really a problem, huh?”

“Nah,” Scorpia shook her head.


	2. Happy Thoughts: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is more a look at how Scorpia sees her friends than anything else, but it still came out cute and I'm happy with it.

It took another week for Scorpia to notice that thinking positive probably wasn’t working as well for Entrapta as it did for her.

Entrapta had an excited, almost frantic energy about herself most of the time.  It could get hard to keep track of her sometimes because of how quickly she could move or switch gears, but once she got going there was a momentum to her that couldn’t be stopped.  Scorpia found it mesmerizing, she could lose hours just listening to Entrapta talk through her thoughts. A lot of it flew over Scorpia’s head, but Entrapta always had a recorder or two running, so if she got lost Entrapta could just play back the part she needed and plow right on ahead.

The last couple days, however, she’d begun to slow down a little.

“Fright Zone log: day… eight?  Nine?”

“Ten,” Scorpia provided, cocking her head as Entrapta’s hair poofed and lashed at air for a moment.

“Is it?” Entrapta turned to her, mask down as she lowered herself to the floor.

“Pretty sure.”

“Thank you,” she brought the recorder back up and flipped her mask open, “day ten addendum: the Black Garnet differs significantly from First Ones tech I’ve worked with in the past.  Its code is by and large intact, though there are significant parasitic attachments to many parts of it that will need to be screened, and appears to be designed to be interfaced with.  This may be due to its nature as a Runestone, and therefore its natural- though at the moment severed- attachment to a-”

“Entrapta,” Catra spoke from her spot lounging against one of the currently inactive machines in the room, “you already said that, twenty minutes ago.”  Entrapta blinked and hit the rewind on her recorder to check.

“-Princess.  Despite this it seems to reject most pieces of other code, both First Ones and current-” Entrapta stopped it with an almost confused huff and shook her head.

“Sorry,” she gave them both a bashful smile, “sometimes repetition helps reach further conclusions.”  Scorpia’s eyes narrowed a little as she tried to remember what came immediately after that on the recording.

“You were saying that the extra code tacked on might be why it’s not taking new commands.”  Scorpia said, watching as Entrapta jumped and pointed to her, the grin taking on a more grateful slant.

“Exactly!  Then I… oh.”  She gave a nervous chuckle, “the parasitic code gave me the runaround and...”  She turned back to the Garnet, murmuring to herself. Even with the mask down it was easy to read Entrapta like an open book, the amount of energy she gave off alone made it hard not to get swept up in whatever she was feeling.  Right now that energy had come to a screeching halt; she’d lost track of what she’d been doing entirely and was trying to find it again.

That didn’t happen in Scorpia’s experience, sure she’d get sidetracked and have to double back sometimes, but she always kept the central goal in mind and either knew where to get back on track or knew which part of her tape to listen to that would remind her, she never just  _ stopped _ .  It occured to Scorpia that Entrapta hadn’t actually been recording for the past ten minutes.

Something was wrong.

Scorpia opened her mouth to say something, but Catra beat her to it.

“If you need a break, take a break; we’ve got time.”  Catra said as she pushed herself upright and sauntered over to where Entrapta was standing.  “Took you more than a week to hit burnout, that’s a lot more than anyone else can say working as much as you have.”

Catra was harder to keep a read on than Entrapta, a lot harder.  Catra was a bundle of contradictions that bristled and lashed at unexpected moments, or softened at even more unexpected ones; who could make her words leave scars but shrunk on herself when she thought no one was looking afterwords.  She carried herself with a muddled hybrid of an officer’s swagger and a prankster’s slink, but puffed herself up with righteous fury at the smallest hint of someone probing for weakness. She made shows of keeping it clear theirs was a purely professional relationship but would sacrifice efficiency for Scorpia or Entrapta’s comfort at the drop of a hat; didn’t want to be touched, but played with Entrapta’s hair constantly and would lean against Scorpia’s arms when she was bored.

She seemed to have different faces she wore at different times.  Sometimes it was like she was trying to be what a little kid  _ thought _ Hordak was like, but other times it was like she was waiting for someone to challenge her just so she could show them how stupid they were to try, and at times when her mouth twisted into a bitter smirk she could entice and sting like Shadow Weaver.

Then there was Catra when it came to Adora, and  _ hoo boy, _ that was a tangle of things that gave Scorpia a headache and made something nasty simmer down in her bones.  All she really knew about that side of Catra was it made her want to bundle her up in a million blankets and never  let go.

“I don’t burn out,” Entrapta insisted with a bite that Scorpia hadn’t heard in her voice before.  “I just… need something to drink. Carbonation helps me focus.”

“Scorpia,” Catra said as she wrapped a stray lock of Entrapta’s hair around her finger, “see if you can’t get her something.”  Scorpia saluted and got to her feet, casting a quick look over her shoulder as she left. Catra was pointing at some piece of the machine encasing the Black Garnet that seemed to have Entrapta at rapt attention.

Scorpia smiled, in her own way Catra was trying to look out for Entrapta, too.

Entrapta’s particular tastes weren’t exactly difficult to come by in the Fright Zone, you just needed to know who to talk to.  What they were was time consuming. Tiny food, for instance, didn’t come easy from the regulation meals, more mush than solid. So they had to commandeer the kitchens every few hours to make her something she could actually eat.

Sodas, on the other hand, had a weird sort of underground dealing ring going on.  They weren’t contraband specifically, they were just something that wasn’t really made in the Fright Zone, Hordak didn’t see the use for them so he didn’t devote resources to them.

They really needed to get Entrapta to make a device for making them.  They’d rule the market. Scorpia chuckled to herself as she headed down to the back door.  There were all sorts of nooks and crannies in the winding buildings of the Fright Zone for illicit dealings to take place, finding the spots where it was actually happening was just a trick of looking for the one people were walking past a little slower than normal.

As she approached a pair of loitering cadets they snapped to attention, Scorpia recognized one of them, Lonnie, she thought her name was.  The other was a boy with horns that was sweating bullets at the sight of her. Lonnie grimaced at him and snapped her fingers to bring his attention off of her.

The exchange was a brief one, Scorpia paid for the soda and learned the boy’s name- Jeffrey.  She made a mental note to say hi to him next time they passed in the halls. As she headed back towards the lab it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Entrapta eat today either.  So she headed off to the kitchen to make her something.

The full trip ended up taking almost an hour longer than she thought it would, but at the end of it she had a nice tray of tiny pastries and seven sodas.  Enough for a nice meal between the three of them.

As she opened the door to the lab her greeting died in her throat in response to a familiar rumble of a snore.  Scorpia beamed as she saw Entrapta and Catra leaning against each other at one of the desks, a half-finished little machine between them, both out like lights.  She contained a delighted little sound and carefully put the tray and sodas down on a countertop.

She crouched next to the desk the two of them were sitting at and looked across their faces.  Entrapta looked just as peaceful as the third night, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen Catra quite so calm.

Catra had become known for taking naps in weird spots at weird times since Adora left, but there was always a tension to it, the slightest noise could wake her, and every time Scorpia had seen her there had been a disquieted crease in her brow, telltale signs of the nightmares.

Right now, though, she had slowed to a stop.  Deep, even breaths, her entire body relaxed and still even with the raucous sound of Entrapta’s enthusiastic snoring right next to her head, an arm thrown across Entrapta’s shoulder with comfortable ease.  Catra had never looked so content before.

Scorpia felt her own brow furrow, if being close to someone was how Catra had kept the nightmares away before, this was probably the first really good sleep she’d had since.  That dark feeling in her gut churned and she took a deep breath to steady herself.

She turned her thoughts to planning as she stood to slink out of the room.  If both Catra and Entrapta had the same method to sleep soundly, they’d just have to make a night of it.  She smiled as the door closed behind her and she headed back down to the ground level to get more sodas, sleepover time.


	3. Happy Thoughts: Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took forever cause I kept wanting it to be longer, but I've finally had to give up the ghost and admit the second part of it is actually the next chapter.

Catra wasn’t having it.

 

“Aww, but Catra, I already bought all the soda and made a ton of tiny cakes,” Scorpia had to keep a whine out of her voice, people didn’t like it when she got whiny.  “I even made some of those pinata things Entrapta told me about, it’s a little cardboard animal that you’re supposed to break open with a stick. I made one for each of us, it’ll be fun!”

 

“No, Scorpia,” Catra growled, waving her off and getting back to the report she was reading over.  The duties of her promotion had been “implemented immediately,” in Hordak’s words, meaning the daytime moon hadn’t even been down before she’d been told she was already supposed to go through Shadow Weaver’s things.  Days later and she still wasn’t done. “Ugh, what’s the big deal, anyways? It’s just sleeping in the same room.” Scorpia bit back what she wanted to say, Catra didn’t take well to others trying to take care of her, even people trying to help her take care of herself were met with derision.

 

“You took out Shadow Weaver!”  Scorpia pleaded instead, “and got promoted!  We have  _ got _ to celebrate.”

 

Catra eyed her up and down from over the report, eyes narrowed and suspicious.

 

“What’s your angle?”

 

“No angle, Boss,” Scorpia stood up a little straighter, almost missing the way the corners of Catra’s mouth flicked up at that.  A nice little half-smile that made Scorpia want to coax it bigger.

 

“You wouldn’t have one, would you?”  She huffed- which Scorpia was  _ pretty sure _ wasn’t an insult- and went back to the papers, “answer’s still no.  I swear, you’ve been weird since Entrapta crashed.”

 

“On your shoulder!”

 

“...Yeah,” Catra rolled her eyes but didn’t look up, “you sure you don’t need to crash, too?”

 

“No, probably not.”  Scorpia shrugged, “would you say yes if I did?”  Catra shot her a look that was as much a yes as it was a promise that if she ever tried it she’d get punched.  “Understood.”

 

“Scorpia,” she sighed, squaring her shoulders and putting on her best no-nonsense voice like she was trying to imitate an old instructor, “I’m not going to ‘sleep over’ in your room,” she put up a finger to stop Scorpia before she could finish taking in her breath, “you’re not doing it in mine, and neither of us are spending a night in Entrapta’s lab- do you  _ want _ to get electrocuted?”

 

Scorpia tried to keep her disappointment off her face but it must have shown cause Catra growled in irritation and began tapping a claw against the desk.  “You and Entrapta can do it if you want, but I have more important things to do than sleep.”

 

“You sleep all the time, though,” Scorpia pointed out, “all over the place.”  Catra’s ears folded back and her fur puffed up with embarrassment.

 

“I do not- it’s called power napping, and it’s more efficient.”  Catra snapped before shuddering, “ew, that felt like something  _ she _ would say, is this what being ‘responsible’ is?”

 

“Sorry, Boss.”  Scorpia said before she could start spiraling.  Catra’s shoulders came down and she let out a less irritated breath- she definitely liked nicknames.

 

“Just, go do whatever it is you do when I’m not around,” Catra waved her off. “I’ve got boring, really old reports sorted by an even more ancient hag’s idea of orderly to get through.  Just be glad I’m not making you help me with this.” Scorpia almost managed to get the offer to do just that out of her mouth before Catra continued, “that is not a call for help, get out.”  Scorpia took a breath to keep talking but deflated with a smile.

 

“Alright, talk to you later.”  Catra gave her a strange look as Scorpia turned to leave, but she ignored it.

 

Scorpia wasn’t sure what to do after that, her brow furrowing as she thought.  She’d definitely be suggesting sleeping together to Entrapta, but that still left them with the issue of how to help Catra sleep.

 

Did she really even need to?  Catra was incredibly capable, even apparently sleep deprived, and she seemed like she’d found her own sort of work around.  “Power napping” as she called it. Scorpia shook her head as she walked, even if it was more efficient, there was no way it was good for her.  It didn’t even happen at regular intervals, she’d just disappear at random times and somebody would find her tucked into the corner on top of some piping in some empty room somewhere an hour later.

 

Scorpia stopped walking as she came to a conclusion, she didn’t  _ need to _ so much as she wanted to.  Catra was her friend, it was only right that she was worried and looked for a way to help.  So she didn’t have to, but she was going to, darn it.  

 

She just had to figure out how to get Catra to let her.


End file.
